We started Oak City Labs because we believe the same data, automation, and AI infrastructure that powers large enterprises should be available to the businesses that make up most of the economy.
We have spent our careers on the whole arc of this work: sitting with a company until the real problem is clear, designing the most efficient solution rather than the most impressive one, and then owning that solution through its life — deploying it, measuring it, and rebuilding the parts the business outgrows. Then we would talk to the owner of a company a fraction the size, facing the same problems, and watch the conversation stop at the price. The capability existed. It just wasn't for them.
What changed is the cost of building it. Work that once took a team of specialists most of a year now takes a small senior team a matter of weeks, because AI has collapsed the distance between knowing what to build and having it running. That doesn't make the expertise optional — someone still has to know what is worth building in the first place. It makes the expertise affordable. That is a different thing entirely, and it is the reason Oak City Labs exists.
So we built the firm we wanted those owners to be able to call. Small enough that you talk directly to the people doing the work. Senior enough to get it right the first time. What we build belongs to you outright, and it gets measured against your business outcomes rather than our activity. Clarity, capacity, and control used to be a function of company size. We think that era is over.
A small, senior team with the technical depth and business experience to design and build systems that actually fit how your business works.
John spent years managing a software development lab at NC State University that built systems for private companies and public agencies, then founded several startups of his own. That mix gave him rep after rep at learning how an organization actually works, finding its real problem, and designing the most efficient solution to it — along with a close view of what small and mid-sized business owners are up against. His approach follows from that: start small, prove the value, and build as resources allow.
Outside the work, John plays bass around town in cover, wedding, and corporate event bands, and runs an audio production company handling sound and lighting for events.
Vince spent 30 years as a research professor at Notre Dame and NC State, securing $12M in funding and publishing more than 60 papers across systems and machine learning research. His recent work is hands-on: RAG agents, MCP servers, and autonomous workflows for appointment scheduling and complex query resolution, including as lead of a 10-person team at an early-stage startup. He has founded several startups himself, and pairs architecture with implementation so the design and the working system come from the same hands.
Outside the work, Vince owns and operates Mr Mike's Used Books in Cary, NC.
Let's spend 30 minutes together. We'll listen to your challenges, share honest perspectives on where the biggest opportunities are, and leave you with at least one concrete idea, regardless of whether we work together.